455 meters above the world.The air inside the 108th-floor penthouse of Genesis Tower was unnervingly thin, deathly still. This was Chairman Kang’s private sanctuary—a glass-walled altar looming over Seoul’s skyline, designed specifically for the chosen ‘bugs’ of his empire. Min-ho clawed his way back to consciousness, a violent cough racking his chest as the sterile air scraped his lungs. The black-veined marble beneath his cheek felt like sub-zero permafrost.

  The atmosphere was a suffocating cocktail of harsh medical disinfectant and the acrid, metallic tang of machine oil. Before he could even open his eyes, the auditory pressure hit him—the low, guttural resonance of the skyscraper swaying in the gale. It sounded like the digestive growl of a colossal beast. At this height, the warmth of human clamor and the distant blare of traffic were ghosts of a world he no longer belonged to.

  “Finally awake, you half-baked young master?”

  The voice of Director Jo cut through the haze. A man in his mid-forties with a receding hairline that glistened with greasy sweat under the clinical LED lights. Jo was already scanning the emergency crates in the corner, his eyes narrowed with the predatory calculation of a man already measuring his throne in this sealed-off kingdom. Beside him lay Yuna, the actress. Her glamorous dress was a crumpled ruin, and tears—streaked black with mascara and the cloying scent of musk—trailed down her face in a mask of pure terror.

  Suddenly, the wall-to-ceiling display ignited.

  Chairman Kang’s face filled the screen, eerily immobile. His skin, pulled taut to defy his fifty years, possessed the translucent, inorganic sheen of polished porcelain. But it was his eyes that froze the room. Beneath unblinking lids, his pupils swept over the survivors with the cold, mechanical detachment of a predator watching ants under glass. Staring into that gaze, Min-ho felt a primal chill crawl up his spine. It wasn’t the gaze of a man; it was the stare of a stuffed beast, preserved in eternal malice.

  His lips moved with a glacial slowness. Thin and drained of blood, they curled into a slight, asymmetrical tilt—less a smile than the lethal edge of a well-honed blade. Not a single muscle near his mouth twitched; in that uncanny stillness, a voice like liquid nitrogen flowed from the speakers.

  “Welcome, my bugs.”

  Chairman Kang slowly swirled the ice in his whiskey glass.

  Clink. Clink.

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  The crystalline chime of ice striking glass sliced through the room’s suffocating tension like a razor. His knuckles were

  small but taut, the blue veins on the back of his hand pulsing like a viper constricting its prey.

  “Professor Park, I wanted you to personally experience the ‘noble world of numbers’ you so dearly taught. And Min-ho... you’ve suffered quite enough in your brother’s shadow, haven’t you? As for you, Team Leader Park...”

  Chairman Kang’s eyelids fluttered, a motion so slow it felt deliberate. In that fleeting instant, a flash of pure, murderous

  intent ignited in his dark pupils.

  “Your arrogant technology is a toy at this altitude. Let your brain prove exactly how powerless a disconnected neural network becomes as it grows cold.”

  Team Leader Park lunged at the wall-mounted terminal, tearing at the casing like a feral animal. His screams were raw, jagged.

  “The connections... they’re gone! Everything!”

  he shrieked.

  “This isn’t a standby mode or a server lag—the endpoint itself has been forcibly logged out! My entire neural network pipeline is offline!”

  His fingernails shattered against the metal, leaving streaks of crimson on the black marble floor. He didn't even flinch at the pain; the digital void was far more terrifying.

  “This isn't a simple failure,”

  he gasped, his voice cracking.

  “They’ve purged our access at the root system level. We've been erased!”Chairman Kang’s lips parted once more, a sliver of bone-white teeth gleaming behind the screen.

  “There is only one way out: a six-digit code,”

  Chairman Kang’s voice drifted through the speakers, smooth and merciless.

  “The clue is engraved right there in my study. You have one week. After that, I will begin to slowly drain the oxygen from this room. Like climbers dying in the Death Zone of a high-altitude peak, I want to savor the sound of your lungs as they gradually burst.”

  The screen died, plunging the room back into a vacuum-like silence.

  The air had barely cooled when the laws of the world below evaporated. Director Jo climbed atop a food crate, his eyes gleaming with a newfound, jagged authority as he brandished a sharp metal component. At 455 meters above the ground, morality had no weight.

  Min-ho turned away from the burgeoning violence, his gaze falling upon a cold, obsidian-finished wall. There, etched into the surface with surgical precision, was an inscription:

  [The two greatest solitudes shall join hands and guard the end of the six-digit code.]

  Min-ho felt a jolt of recognition—a visceral, instinctive realization. It was a mathematical riddle. He knew it referred to the largest twin primes within the six-digit range. But behind him, before the code could even be contemplated, a far more primitive machinery had begun to turn.

  Even before

  the riddle was solved, the ugly hierarchy of human nature was already carving its first bloody marks into the 108th floor.